Florida would be on the list, but every aspect of the state's economy is based on ripping off tourists and retirees. Everything is a scam... everything. In FL, you're either a con artist or a victim. (St. Petersburg beaches were very nice... before 1980. I lived in Madeira Beach when developers turned miles and miles of mostly unspoiled beaches into miles and miles of hi-rise condos and hotels in just three years.)

Of the places I've visited, the only other two places I'd consider preferable are Reno/Carson City NV or Portland/Salem/Eugene OR. (NYC is a great place to visit, but I couldn't live there. Same with Chicago, Seattle and SF.)

And no, after growing up on the W. Coast of Florida, I do NOT go swimming at the beach in California. Been in the Pacific only twice - the first time was ignorance and the second time was a mistake. (And now, I must end this line with a parenthesis, because symmetry.)

In LA, every damn time they mention a highway they put "the" in front of it. The 405, the 5, etc. Lived in the Bay Area for 20 years and never heard it but go to L.A. and even the damn broadcasters do it.

Knock that shiat off. Or there will be hell to pay when I am King.

Hmmm. I do notice that I say "101" and "280" but I do say "the 17" and "the 1". Sometimes it just sounds better.

Mrtraveler01:raerae1980: Sorry but our beaches don't look like that. Not the ones I frequent, anyway. Gulf coast Florida, now, they have some UGLY beaches.

Which beaches in Florida did you go to?

Not many. One I vivedly recall was west of Gainesville. Can't remember the name but I was shocked at how terrible it was. Drove along the coast but wasn't impressed. Northern part of the state, anway. Haven't been to the southern half.

In LA, every damn time they mention a highway they put "the" in front of it. The 405, the 5, etc. Lived in the Bay Area for 20 years and never heard it but go to L.A. and even the damn broadcasters do it.

Knock that shiat off. Or there will be hell to pay when I am King.

modestly funny anecdote: I grew up in SoCal and now live in Northern California. I still the 10, the 5, the 405, the 215 but also say 80, 50, 680, 880

In LA, every damn time they mention a highway they put "the" in front of it. The 405, the 5, etc. Lived in the Bay Area for 20 years and never heard it but go to L.A. and even the damn broadcasters do it.

Knock that shiat off. Or there will be hell to pay when I am King.

Yeah....I might have been guilty of calling 405 in the Seattle area "The 405" when I moved back after college.

jso2897:Smeggy Smurf: The only thing I like about California is you motherfarkers know how to drive.

Well, we ought to - it's about all we f**king do.

Whoever thinks drivers in LA are examples of "motherfarkers [who] know how to drive" doesn't know how to drive.

Down here you have chipped riceboys and pickup truck rednecks doing 95+ alongside stoned lowriders, distracted soccer moms and middle-aged Asian women who are afraid to speed up to more than 45 to merge on a freeway, and in between you've got everyday left-lane commuters who think that a lane change indicator from a car in an adjacent lane means speed up and close the gap. Get any of them outside the urban freeway system and they have no farking clue how to behave on a limited access interstate with less than three lanes, much less a two-lane rural road.

At least nobody observes the posted speed limit... depending on the stretch of road, the average speed in non-jammed conditions is 70-80 MPH.

I had a colleague transplant from Indianapolis, and after a few weeks he observed "Where I come from, forests have trees, rivers have water, and cops enforce the speed limit." He also said, "People here drive so close together, that when someone steps on the brake in Pasadena, traffic stops in San Dimas."

I'm from the Bay but now that Frisco has become an elitist yuppie hellhole, I'd say LA is better. Better weather and more attractive women and an actual middle and working class.

/San Jose

Yeah, I'm calling shenanigans. No one from the Bay area calls the city "Frisco". That's something that dopey tourists do.

I say it to piss off the elitist SF dicks that are mostly from out of state but want to act like they are legit SFers. The funny thing is that the rest of the Bay does call it Frisco at times, while in your very own city the minorities (blacks and Latinos) and old school SFers that are being forced out by the douchebags that whine about the term, still use the word. I say it to weed out the people in SF I can't stand, which at this point is like 75% of the city.

tenton:obenchainr: Geotpf: The reason, I think, is that California is smart enough to not duplicate state highway numbers with ones that have Federal highways/freeways, while other states aren't as smart (so State Route 91 and I-91 could potentially be different roads).

The other reason is that the "interstate" vs "state" is kind of silly. Like, the 405 is an interstate - except that it starts and ends in LA Metro (it's a bypass for the 5, which is why, but it still doesn't really make sense). Whereas the 101 goes all the way up to the northern border of Oregon but somehow isn't an interstate highway. Or, like, the 210, which is an interstate for part but only a local for part. The 110 and the 710 start a few miles apart in the Pasadena/South Pas area and both head to Long Beach, but they're also both Interstates - or, at least, the 110 is for part of it; the other part (the oldest part) is just a local.

Don't get me started on the 110 and 710. Talk about the gaps in the freeway system. They should all be meeting in Pasadena, at the 210. Stupid NIMBYs.

However, IMO, it's perfectly cromulent for all the bypasses and spurs to also be named Interstates (since it's a connected part of the Interstate Highway System). Even that spur of the 5 that heads to the airport and doesn't actually directly connect to the 5 (the 105).

/I remember when they changed the signs from SR-7 to I-710, but not quite old enough to remember SR-11 being changed to I-110

The 105 was originally going to merge into the 5, but the NIMBYs in Norwalk killed that.

CA-7 and 11 changed to 710 & 110 around the same time (between 1980 & 1984). The numbers were retired but now they're back...as border crossing links. CA-7 runs from east of Calexico to I-8, and CA-11 has been approved as a tollway that will run east of Otay Mesa to the 125/905 interchange.

raerae1980:Mrtraveler01: raerae1980: Sorry but our beaches don't look like that. Not the ones I frequent, anyway. Gulf coast Florida, now, they have some UGLY beaches.

Which beaches in Florida did you go to?

Not many. One I vivedly recall was west of Gainesville. Can't remember the name but I was shocked at how terrible it was. Drove along the coast but wasn't impressed. Northern part of the state, anway. Haven't been to the southern half.

Cedar Key? Haven't been there so I can't judge. I've heard the Panhandle ones are nice too so I'm surprised. I've only been to the gulf beach between Clearwater and Naples and I can say that those help make up for the sad excuse that are the Gulf beaches outside of Florida (I am a little biased but these are some of the best beaches I've been to)

Mrtraveler01:raerae1980: Mrtraveler01: raerae1980: Sorry but our beaches don't look like that. Not the ones I frequent, anyway. Gulf coast Florida, now, they have some UGLY beaches.

Which beaches in Florida did you go to?

Not many. One I vivedly recall was west of Gainesville. Can't remember the name but I was shocked at how terrible it was. Drove along the coast but wasn't impressed. Northern part of the state, anway. Haven't been to the southern half.

Cedar Key? Haven't been there so I can't judge. I've heard the Panhandle ones are nice too so I'm surprised. I've only been to the gulf beach between Clearwater and Naples and I can say that those help make up for the sad excuse that are the Gulf beaches outside of Florida (I am a little biased but these are some of the best beaches I've been to)

Ft. Desoto State Park-near St. Petersburg

Siesta Key Beach-near Sarasota

Sanibel Island-Near Ft. Myers

Marco Island beach-near Naples

You know what, I think it was Cedar Keys. Thanks for the pics, those beaches do look pretty. I basically work at the beach, I'm that close to it. So I'm very biased towards Malibu and think its one of the best. I'm very lucky to have a view of the beach everyday at lunch. Don't get me started on our sunsets.

Tellingthem:When I lived in San Diego I had to do a lot of jobs up in LA. The general rule was we work from 10-2. anytime before or after that meant you were fighting traffic there and back. Besides that I really didn't mind LA. Would never live there but nice place to visit. And when you get to any large city you will find all sorts of people some are nice and some aren't. A lot of snobs and posers. People who think they are special because they live there. A lot of it was for show and you quickly learned how to spot the fakes. But also lots of really nice and interesting people as well. It is what it is and what you take from it.

I just grew tired of it all. And moving back to small town flyover country is like a vacation. Yeah the weather is nicer there but you pay for it.

I had similar experience living in San Diego but working all over the state.

I live in the valley, 15 minutes from work. Rarely take the freeway. When I do, it's not a big deal, I just leave the proper amount of time. We tend to think of places in terms of how many minutes to get there, not how many miles.

Weather is great, I find the people here are better than many places I visit, especially in terms of tolerance of people who aren't like them. We could use more rain though.

shamalamadingdong:Buttknuckle: I have so many cities that I want to visit and LA is straight at the bottom of the list.

/Superficial and fake=no thanks You know, I hear that shiat a lot from people who have never been to L.A. And I've been all around the world, and I've found that the ratio of superficial and fake people stays around the same just about everywhere I go. Every town in every country has salt of the earth and snakes in the grass. I do find, however, that the rate of judgmental, ignorant twats who think they know all there is to know about L.A. and its denizens from watching TV and anecdotes from other judgmental twats, jumps when you leave Southern California.

Pretty much. I had an aversion to LA until I actually went there. Now I can't wait to go back. If PDX doesn't work out, then I'd be quite happy to live in LA.

Approximately 20,000 people just died in an earthquake, massive fires are spreading throughout the region, and hordes of illegal immigrants are pelting drivers with Hispanic cheese. Non-Californians: I encourage you as strongly as possible to NOT move here! It's a dystopian nightmare!

obenchainr:Geotpf: The reason, I think, is that California is smart enough to not duplicate state highway numbers with ones that have Federal highways/freeways, while other states aren't as smart (so State Route 91 and I-91 could potentially be different roads).

The other reason is that the "interstate" vs "state" is kind of silly. Like, the 405 is an interstate - except that it starts and ends in LA Metro (it's a bypass for the 5, which is why, but it still doesn't really make sense). Whereas the 101 goes all the way up to the northern border of Oregon but somehow isn't an interstate highway. Or, like, the 210, which is an interstate for part but only a local for part. The 110 and the 710 start a few miles apart in the Pasadena/South Pas area and both head to Long Beach, but they're also both Interstates - or, at least, the 110 is for part of it; the other part (the oldest part) is just a local.

There is some rhyme and reason to the interstate naming (in case you're too lazy to go to wikipedia as suggested above):-East/West interstates are even numbers, 2-98 with increasing numbers as you go North.-North/South interstates are odd number, 1-99 with increasing numbers as you go East.-The more major of the interstates are multiples of five.-Loops are 3 digit, with an even numbered prefix added to the highway they're connected to-Spurs are 3 digit with an odd numbered prefix added to the highway they're connected to

Captain Dan:Approximately 20,000 people just died in an earthquake, massive fires are spreading throughout the region, and hordes of illegal immigrants are pelting drivers with Hispanicnacho cheese. Non-Californians: I encourage you as strongly as possible to NOT move here! It's a dystopian nightmare!

Adjusted.

Plus you forgot about the avalanches of celebrity skin as various skin lifts collapsed.

lohphat:In SoCal people know and refer to the freeways by their given name: The San Diego Fwy (405), The Santa Ana Fwy (5), The Long Beach Fwy (710), The Garden Grove Fwy (22), The San Bernadino Fwy (605), etc.

The 605 would be The San Gabriel River Freeway. The San Bernardino is I-10 east of downtown.

SurelyShirley:lohphat: In SoCal people know and refer to the freeways by their given name: The San Diego Fwy (405), The Santa Ana Fwy (5), The Long Beach Fwy (710), The Garden Grove Fwy (22), The San Bernadino Fwy (605), etc.

The 605 would be The San Gabriel River Freeway. The San Bernardino is I-10 east of downtown.

Yes, someone corrected me earlier. I've been gone for 20 years. I goofed. But it proves the point about the names.

Here in SF the only name I can recall used here is The Nimitz highway. All the others I can't begin to name.